So I recently “wrote” an app (50K/30 available for sale now at the App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/50k-30/id570422816?mt=8) for $1.99) and I spent maybe an entire day and night (read “dev” blog?) gathering and sorting through App Review sites.
Now Maniac Dev has a pretty impressive list of App Review sites (http://maniacdev.com/2012/05/ios-app-review-sites/), but it has been months since that was updated.
I used that as my base list and just check out each and every site to see if they “fit” my app, well all the strictly game ones are out of the list, and obviously any site that is one break or stopped reviewing is also out of the list. I only ended up with around 50 sites, and that isn’t much for cold emails (the email version of cold calling?).
And then there are the review sites that charge you for expedited reviews. Now, I have no money, so no way am I going to go for that. Besides paying someone to review your app just seems kind of… wrong?
Now features are okay for me. If I have enough money, I’d pay someone to “feature” my app, I mean, that’s like advertising, right.
But yah, no money. My sister and I do call ourselves “2 Broke Girls”.
But hey, I realized that a lot of fellow indie developers are poor too. So what about us? How can we let anyone notice our app in that way way way too crowded App Store?
Okay, one idea, make my own App Review and Feature blog (I’m so poor, I can’t even afford a website). And then any indie developer can just I don’t know… shoot me an email or message me here or tweet me or toss me a paper note or whatever, and I will try my best to review or feature them, oh and I will not charge them anything, expedited reviews or what not (we’ll do it FIFO, first in first out?).
Okay, I know that my blog doesn’t really have that much page views (I take full responsibility for the lack of blog posts as of late). But if I have apps to review or feature (they should be easier to review than tech books, right?) and then I’d have more things to blog about. If I’m lazy to write, I can always make a video and ramble, I think.
So yeah, it’s just an idea. I will try to blog at least once a week and feature as much apps as possible (of course, that is if anyone will as me to review or feature them).
So that’s it for now.
Michelle Chen 